A "Loving" 40th Anniversary

Virginia Statue 1942

Sec. 4546. Marriage of a white person with a colored person; how punished.--If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than five years.

Virginia was the first state (in 1662) to make it illegal for a colored person to marry a white person. Between 1913-1947 a total of 30 states had laws against interracial marriage. As late as 1966 such laws were still valid in 17 states, including Virginia. In 1967 the Supreme Court struck down any remaining laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

The Supreme Court decision came as a result of a case brought before it, Loving v. Virginia, which challenged Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924" This Act required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth, and felonized marriage between "white persons" and non-white persons.

Mildred Jeter (a black woman) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man) both from Central Point, Caroline County, Virginia, left the state in June 1958 to be married in Washington DC because mixed marriages were unlawful in that state. Upon their return to Virginia they were both arrested, charged with violating the state's Racial Integrity Act. They both escaped jail time but were banished from the state for 25 years. They lived in Washington DC for 5 years before contacting Bernard Cohen, a young attorney who was volunteering at the ACLU. They asked him to see if the judge who banished them would reconsider his decision.

"They just were in love with one another and wanted the right to live together as husband and wife in Virginia, without any interference from officialdom. When I told Richard that this case was, in all likelihood, going to go to the Supreme Court of the United States, he became wide-eyed and his jaw dropped," Cohen recalls.

Cohen and another lawyer challenged the Lovings' conviction, but the original judge in the case upheld his decision. Judge Leon Bazile wrote:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. ... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

The case did eventually reach the Supreme Court and the unanimous decision known as the "Loving Decision" struck down the anti-miscegenation statutes of Virginia and 16 other states, erasing the last of such statues in the United States of America. Chief Justice Earl Warren writes:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. These convictions must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

June 12th is Loving Day and this year, 2007, is the 40th anniversary of that Supreme Court decision.

Privacy International Blasts Google

Google has received Privacy International's worst privacy rating. According to PI, Google is accused of "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." Google ranked the lowest among 22 other high profile Internet companies that include: Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, Wikipedia, The BBC and others.

Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. PI is based in London, England, and has an office in Washington, D.C. PI has conducted campaigns and research throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, medical privacy, and freedom of information and expression. In a statement PI said:

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to "achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy"

To see the report in its entirety click here.

To see how each company was ranked click here.

The categories used for analysis included: Corporate administrative details, Corporate leadership, Data collection and processing, Data retention, Openness and Transparency, Responsiveness, Ethical compass, Customer and User control, Fair gateways and authentication, Privacy enhancing innovations and Privacy invasive innovations.

Google of course took issue with the report and defended its record saying that it aggressively defends its users' privacy and stands behind its track record. It was last year that Google successfully fought a subpoena from the Department of Justice trying to review millions of search requests. Other search engines like Yahoo! and AOL handed their records over to the Government but Google refused, took the DOJ to court, and won.

"We are disappointed with Privacy International's report, which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services," said Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel.

"It's a shame that Privacy International decided to publish its report before we had an opportunity to discuss our privacy practices with them."

PI claimed they contacted Google before publishing their report but did not receive a response from the company. This is not the first time that PI has tackled Google over privacy issues. In 2004 they filed complaints in 16 different countries against Google's Gmail service claiming among other things:

• Inadequacy, unfairness and lack of safeguards or redress in the Gmail Terms of Use.


• An absence of contractual commitment to the security of data.


• Breaches of law concerning the interception and scanning of emails

Prior to issuing the current report there seemed to be some "cloak and dagger" activity going on behind the scenes. Google had apparently tried to show that there was bias towards Microsoft, and presumably against Google, at Privacy International which prompted PI to publish an open letter to Google denying this saying they were "a fiercely independent organization that has never shown fear nor favour."

As stated in a previous article Is Google Big Brother? there are serious privacy concerns that need to be addressed by Google. The report by Privacy International highlights this. Google has detailed personal information on millions of people who use their various services. How is this data being used? Is it safe and secure? Who has access to it? If there are inaccuracies, how would I know? How long is it kept for? It is not comforting to learn that privacy is not a top priority at Google.

Another aspect to Google brought out in the report is that it tried to undermine the integrity of PI, claiming favoritism towards Microsoft. Instead of dealing with the facts in the report it tried to marginalize the source. Is this the kind of behavior that we can expect from a company whose motto is: Don't Be Evil? Is this the way to deal with criticism? Have others been silenced? There is a saying: "Power corrupts....." Let's hope we are not at the stage that we have to start wondering: "What is Google up to?"

More Controversy at Big Brother

The TV reality program Big Brother is certainly no stranger to controversy. Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was involved in a racial incident on the previous show. Now it seems as if racism has raised its head again on the current show. One of the contestants, Emily Parr, called her housemate Charley Uchea, a nigger. She immediately apologized for using the word, claiming that she was only joking, was not a racist and did not intend to offend anyone. Charley said she was not offended but was certainly shocked by the use of the word. After much debate amongst the contestants and presumably the management of Big Brother, Emily Parr was kicked off the show. Below are two video clips. The first one captures the incident and the ensuing discussion. The second one shows Emily being booted off the show.

Emily calls Charley a Nigger

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNQ09a8fzw]

Emily gets the Boot

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfrYBk4Fkf4]

In the aftermath of all of this Channel 4, which produces the show, issued the following statement:

In consultation with senior executives at Channel 4, the decision was taken to remove Emily from the house on the grounds that she had broken the rules governing contestant behaviour.

The House Rules given to all contestants clearly state: "Big Brother will intervene and take appropriate action if housemates behave in a way that Big Brother considers is unacceptable.

"Unacceptable behaviour includes: behaving in a way that could cause serious offence to either their fellow housemates or members of the viewing public, including serious offence based on the grounds of race.

"Housemates who act in a way that is seriously unacceptable will be evicted."

However some criticized the decision to remove Emily from the show. The following excerpt is from the Daily Mail. Read the entire article here.

Poor Emily. She is the loser in a much more complex game than anything played out on a Channel 4 reality show. It's a game in which the card of racism is now enough to trump any other.

In this confusing, multicultural game, you can be a black male rapper talking about women in the most disgusting, gynaecologically-specific terms on the radio. You can even use the offensive n-word, the one Emily used just once, over and over again and no one will dare to breathe a word of criticism.

But if you are white, like Emily Parr, and you make the mistake of thinking you enjoy equal status in this game, then boy, are you in trouble.

Emily's mistake was to think she could act black. And Channel 4 pounced. You could practically hear the producers' cheer. Bingo! They had got their sacrificial lamb.

It was no use Emily protesting that, only seconds earlier, Charley herself had used the n-word. Nor that, among black friends at home, Emily is often called 'wigger' - an affectionate reference to her genuine love of black culture.

Desperate to exonerate itself after the shaming shambles of Shilpagate, here was Channel 4's chance to prove it was a responsible broadcaster after all.

Emily should have been sent to the communal bathroom to wash her mouth out with soap and water, not hung out to dry.

Although no-one wants to be perceived as supporting racism, there seems to be overwhelming support for Emily Parr. Channel 4 received 922 complaints about Emily being booted from the show verses 68 who thought the channel did the right thing. Many thought that Channel 4 was over-reacting to the Shilpa Shetty affair. According to Anorak, Channel 4 was in trouble no matter how they decided to handle the matter:

How much better it would have been had Big Brother just kept Emily in the house, allowed the housemates to sort it out between themselves, just like in real life. But the tabloids would have got berserk. Black celebrities and former housemates would have been lined up to condemn the show. And Deranged of Surbiton would have called the local police station and reported a crime. So Big Brother becomes big brother.

LOOK! NO WIRES!

Remember when the first remote controls came out for TV sets? They were wired remote controls. You had to connect them to your TV and somehow hide the wires so that no-one tripped over them. But they were great, they freed us from having to get up every time you wanted to change a channel. Next came infra-red remotes and this was just the best thing that ever happened to TV! Now we could really become couch potatoes! and no wires! The same thing happened with telephones. The first models were wired to a plug in the wall and you could only go so far while talking on the phone. Cordless phones set us free to roam the entire house and still talk. But it was the cellular phone that gave us real freedom. You could take it anywhere with you and still make and receive calls. The same thing happened with computers. WI-FI gave us the freedom to take our laptops with us everywhere.

The next revolution in wireless technology could be right in your own home. Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a way to wirelessly beam electricity through an entire house. No more plugs! In the first successful trial of its kind, the team was able to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb 7ft away.

The inspiration for this project came from the lead researcher, Dr Marin Soljacic, who after many nights of forgetting to charge his cell phone came up with the idea that it would be great if the phone would just charge itself. In order to make this happen it would be necessary to find a way to transmit electricity wirelessly. The end result of this "idea" was an invention the team called 'WiTricity', which involves filling a room with a 'non-radiative' electromagnetic field. Most objects in the room - such as people, desks and carpets - would be unaffected by the electromagnetic field. But any objects designed to resonate with the electromagnetic field would absorb the energy.

The scientists say the technique works only over distances of up to 9ft. However, they believe it could be used to charge up a battery within a few yards of the power source connected to a receiving coil. Placing one source in each room could provide enough power for an entire house. The receiver and transmitter would not have to be in view of each other.

Professor Peter Fisher, another of the researchers, said: "As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of wireless power, it would charge automatically without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside such a room."

The researchers believe there is little to worry about on safety grounds, saying that magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms and are unlikely to have any serious side effects.

The Russian Alternative

President Bush and President Putin have been waging a war of words over the US plan to put in place a defensive missile program in Poland and the Czech Republic (two former Soviet block countries). President Putin strongly opposes this seeing it as a threat to Russian security and a dangerous tilt in the balance of power in NATO's favor. President Bush sees it as necessary to counter the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran which might be aimed at Europe.

Both nations seemed to be at an impasse until a proposal was made by Putin at the G8 conference being attended by both Presidents. The Putin proposal calls for the missile defense system to be placed in Azerbaijan, a country much friendlier to Russia than either Poland or the Czech Republic. He also said the location was a much better one for the defense of Europe from all missile threats coming from Asia.

"The first proposal is to use the Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan," said Putin. Putin said that if the missile defense system were located in Azerbaijan it would reach the whole of Europe and present a better capability of defending the EU. By locating the missiles in Azerbaijan, Russia would not aim its own missiles towards Europe and would feel more a partner in developing the missile defense system. "This will create necessary grounds for common work," Putin stated.

President Bush seemed interested in the idea but did not make any commitments saying:

"This is a serious issue and we want to make sure that we all understand each other's positions very clearly," said Bush. "As a result of these conversations, I expect there to be better understanding of the technologies involved and the opportunities to work together. As a result of our discussions, we both agreed to have a strategic dialogue, an opportunity to share ideas and concerns between our State Department, Defense Department and military people"

White House National Security Advisor Steve Hadley called Putin's suggestions a "positive step".

"President Putin basically suggested that the proper approach would be for us to get appropriate experts together in a room, put all the proposals on the table and see if we can plot a way ahead that would provide protection to all three regions -- Russia, Europe, and the United States -- in a very transparent and open way," Hadley stated.

The Gabala radar station has a range of about 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) and is leased to Russia through 2012. The station, Russia's only military facility in Azerbaijan, plays a significant role in the Russian air defense system. Russian experts believe that the joint use of the Gabala radar would be beneficial for all parties concerned as it covers all potential missile threats coming from Asia, and could eliminate the need to place missile defense radars in Europe, including in the Czech Republic. Putin had stated that under the terms of the station's lease, Russia could invite the U.S. into the facility as a joint operator. Azerbaijan's President has assured Putin that would not be a problem if the U.S. and Russia agreed to jointly operate the Gabala radar facility.

It remains to be seen what if anything will come from this proposal but at the very least it shows that Putin is willing to accommodate some kind of defensive missile program as long as the Russians are involved as equal partners with the West.