Stephane Hessel's Messages to the World: Indignez-vous!

A true democracy requires and insists on freedom of the press.

Only when man accedes to complete freedom can we have a democratic state in its ideal form.

The basic motive of the Resistance was indignation.

"As individuals, you are responsible" Jean-Paul Satre. 
The responsibility is that of the individual who will rely neither on a form of power nor on a god.

You must engage --your humanity demands it.
The worst attitude is indifference.

We are not dealing with a small elite anymore, whose actions we can clearly identify.  We are dealing with a vast interdependent world that is interconnected in unprecedented ways.

Two major challenges:
1. The grievous injustices inflicted on people deprived of the essential requirements for a decent life, not only in the third world --in Africa, Asia, Haiti, and elsewhere--but in the suburbs of our largest Western cities, where seclusion and poverty breeds hatred and revolt.  The widening gap between the very poor and very rich is made all the more insulting by the access the poor now have to the Internet and other forms of mass communication that highlight these inequalities.

2. The violation of the basic freedoms and fundamental rights.  In his 1941 State of the Union speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated the "Four Freedoms" he felt people "everywhere in the world" had a right to enjoy: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.  The Four Freedom later served as the foundation for the charter of the United Nations, which was adopted in San Francisco on June 24, 1945, and served as the inspiration for the UN's Universal Declaration of human Rights, drafted under the chairmanship of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, of the economic, social, and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality."

To the youth...: look around you and you will find the themes to justify your indignation...You will become aware of situations so deplorable they simply demand civil action.  Seek and you will find!

Violence is an unavoidable failure...the risk of resorting to violence is that it may only perpetuate violence
Jean-Paul Satre (1947)

Hopefulness and the hope for nonviolence must be favored over violence....
The messages of Gandhi, martin L. King Jr., and Nelson Mandela remain relevant even in a world where ideological confrontations and invasive totalitarianism have been overcome.  They are messages of hope, of faith in a society's ability to overcome conflict through mutual understanding and watchful patience.  To achieve this we must rely on our belief in human rights, the violation of which...must provoke our indignation.

The Western obsession with productivity and the accumulation of wealth has led the world into a crisis.

It is high time that integrity, justice, and sustainable development be allowed to prevail.

Source:

Stephane Hessel. Time for Outrage Indignez-Vous! (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2010). 
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0972-0

Web Security -- How to Defense Yourself

Most important:
Passwords: Choose strong passwords.  A sequence of random upper and lower case letters, mixed with numbers and special characters is better than simple, single words or names that are easy to guess.  Do not use the same password for critical sites as for casual throwaways.

In public places with open wireless: Do not do anything important.  Make sure that connections use HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol with Security).  Your browser will show that you are connected with the HTTPS, and you can see an icon of a closed lock which indicates that the link is encrypted.  But HTTPS only encrypts the contents.

Attachments and downloading or installing: Do not click on to view attachments from strangers, or unexpected attachments from friends; don't automatically accept, click, or install when requested.  Don't download programs of dubious provenance.  Be wary about downloading and installing any software unless it comes from a trusted source.

Windows and Microsoft Office programs: Use anti-virus software.  Keep it up to date.  Do not click on the sites that offer to run a security check on you computer.  Turn off macros in Microsoft Office programs.  Disable ActiveX as much as you can.  Keep other software, like browser and operating system, up to date.

Cautious:
Turn off pop-ups and third-party cookies.  You should set up defenses for each browser you use.

Use add-ons like Adblock and Flashblock to reject advertising images.
Use a spam filter on your mail.
Turn off JavaScript in Adobe Reader.
Turn off services that you don't use.
Turn on the firewall on your computer.  It is a software that monitors incoming and outgoing network connsctions, and blosks those that violate access rules.
Use two-factor authentication on your important accounts if available.

Paranoid:
Disable HTML and JavaScript in your mail reader.
Use NoScript to limit JavaScript, and Ghostery to disable trackers.
Turn off all cookies except for sites that you permit.
Use less-frequently targeted systems (Linux or Mac OS X, instead of Windows; Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera instead of Internet Explorer...)

The same precautions apply to cell phones, too.

Source:

Brian W. Kernighan.  D  Is for Digital –What a Well-Informed Person Should Know About Computers and Communications.  Published by DisforDigital.net; 2011.  ISBN-13: 978-1463733896

ISBN-10: 1463733895, pp. 177-178.

Leadership and Climate Change

There is a long history of bad things happening, people waking up and then going right back to sleep.  The thing that keeps people from going back to sleep is political leaders exercising what they are paid for, namely, leadership.  We do need that sort of leadership at all levels, including the presidential level.  The rate of climate change is running ahead at this point of our ability to solve the problem.
Climate change has always been tomorrow's problem, but sometime you've got to grapple with it.  That time is now.

Michael Oppenheimer
Wilson School and GeoSciences Professor, Princeton University
                                                           
Source:
The Daily Princetonian, Thursday November 8, 2012, Vol. CXXXVI No. 103, p. 3.