Freedomedia

The UC Berkeley police arrested Angela Miller outside the chancellor’s house around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, December 11. But although the Alameda County District Attorney has dropped all charges against the 20-year-old junior and the seven others arrested that night, Miller remains prohibited from entering campus under an interim suspension.

On Monday of that week, activists moved into Wheeler Hall, a university classroom building, for a 24-hour-week-long demonstration they called Live Week. Police didn’t shut down the demonstration until around 4:30 Friday morning. Dozens of students woke up to find out they were under arrest. In all, 66 people were charged with misdemeanor trespassing and taken to Santa Rita jail.

After police raided Wheeler Hall, the organizers decided to move a planned concert to an off-campus co-op. Following the show, a group of concert-goers marched to the campus.

“Somewhere between 40 to 70 individuals showed up outside the chancellors’ house,” said university spokesperson Dan Mogoluf. “Some portion of them were carrying lit torches. Those torches were thrown at the house, heavy objects were also thrown at the windows in what appeared to have been an attempt to break them and to gain entry into the house, possibly, again this is according to UCPD.”

Police charged the eight people arrested that night with numerous felonies including, threatening an education official, rioting, attempted burglary, attempted arson of an occupied building, felony vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

After being held over the weekend on more than $130,000 bail, the district attorney chose not to file any charges against them at their arraignment and ordered their release.

Two of those arrested, Zach Bowin and Angela Miller, are students at UC Berkeley. The university filed an interim suspension that barred them from coming on campus or speaking to students and university employees.

Stephen Rosenbaum is a lecturer at Berkeley law school. He is advising both Bowin and miller on their student conduct hearings.

“Both of these students were served a notice of interim suspension. They’re identical notices, which were also served on the UC Davis students,” said Rosenbaum. “And it recites about six sections of the UC campus code of student conduct and then almost no facts in support of it.”

While Bowin’s suspension was relaxed and he will be able to attend classes this semester, a student conduct panel decided on Wednesday not to loosen miller’s suspension.

During the hearing, the administration showed a university press release and a photograph showing miller holding a torch as evidence. Police seized that photo from an independent journalist who was reporting outside the chancellor’s house. That reporter, David Morse, was also arrested that night.

The panel said in a letter to miller that it decided not allow miller to return to class in part because it was unclear of her commitment to her studies, that she didn’t demonstrate any positive contributions she made to the university, and because she didn’t show any remorse.

Rosenbaum said the outcomes might differ because Miller didn’t have a lawyer present for the hearing.

“The difference is because I was able to find out about Zach Bowin’s situation in time, last semester, I was able to represent him at a hearing where we got most of those restrictions lifted. “Unfortunately I was not aware of Angela Miller’s situation until a day about a day after her hearing was actually held. So she had the same conditions imposed on her as Zach and what’s worse is because she’s living in university leased housing, one of the co-ops, they’re telling her that she has to leave her house as of, I think it’s 5 p.m. this evening.”

But Rosenbaum said Miller plans to stay at her co-op despite the university’s demands.

“The university cannot engage in what’s called self-help eviction. It’s been the law for a number of years in California —and most states— where the landlord can’t come out with the sheriff and put your furniture and your clothing and your belongings on the sidewalk. We don’t operate in the wild west anymore,” said Rosenbaum. “Furthermore as long as Angela continues to be a registered student at the university, the Berkeley student cooperative is not able to evict her from her housing, and if they try to do that — I don’t believe they will — she has a due process to go through. Fortunately the Berkeley student cooperative does believe in due process in ways that the University of California, Berkeley, does not.”

Mogoluf, the UC Berkeley spokesperson said the university is forbidden by law from discussing specifics about students facing disciplinary charges.

“I feel like my rights have been taken away as a student, i feel like the uc has wrongfully criminalized me and it has taken unlawful actions. I feel like the university has overly punished me for nothing,” said Miller. “But I also feel that in all this trouble that’s being caused, there’s a whole community of listeners there, and I feel like they are helping me to win the fight for our education.”

         

UC Berkeley law lecturer discusses the Office of Student Conduct from Josh Wolf on Vimeo.

Angela Miller was thrown in jail and held on more than $100,000 bail after she was arrested from a crowd gathered outside UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home. But even after the DA dropped all the charges against the eight who were arrested, the university is refusing to allow Miller to return to class.

No one has shown evidence that any of those arrested broke any laws when they joined a march on Dec. 10 that resulted in some property damage to the chancellor’s on-campus house.

But on Tuesday, the student conduct office told Miller that she had to meet with a disciplinary panel the following day about her interim suspension. She said she figured the meeting was just a formality so that they could relax her suspension before classes resume Tuesday. The university had already loosened Zachin Bowin’s suspension, the other UC Berkeley student arrested that night, and the two appear to be in the same situation.

Miller brought a fellow student to the meeting as her advisor and a few supporters stood outside the room while the panel met. After discussing her fate, the panel decided to maintain her suspension and continue to bar her from campus. The suspension order also prohibits her from speaking to any of her fellow students as well as university faculty and staff. It should be noted that university spokesperson Dan Mogoluf has said he doesn’t know of any instance in which the university actually punished a student for exercising their First Amendment right to speak to others and said the university is reviewing that provision in its boilerplate suspension order.

The student conduct panel told Miller that since she lives in a student co-op that leases its property from a university-owned building she would also need to move.

Berkeley Law School lecturer Steve Rosenbaum, who advised Bowin during his hearing, has agreed to represent Miller.

In this video taken outside of the student conduct office when Bowin appeared before a hearing, Rosenbaum — who had just been asked to leave for being “disruptive” for acting on his client’s behalf — describes his reaction to the student conduct process, which now threatens Miller future at UC Berkeley.

         

The night-time march to Chancellor Robet Birgeneau’s home, which the governor described as “terrorism” after a handful of students damaged property outside University House, resulted in eight students facing serious felony charges.

But witnesses say that the people arrested on Dec. 10, which include a journalist, two UC Berkeley students, two UC Davis students and others, weren’t the instigators. Instead, the people arrested were the ones who refused to flea from the cops, they say.

After being charged with multiple felonies, the arrestees were held on $132,000 bail. But when the people charged appeared in court — three of whom had already paid more than $10,000 for a bondsman to bail them out — the Alameda County District Attorney decided not to press charges at this time.

Zach Bowin, 21, a sociology student at Berkeley, was one of the eight arrested. Following his arrest, he was immediately banned from campus and unable to complete his finals on schedule. Under the terms of his suspension, Bowin was prohibited from communicating with all faculty, staff and students at the university.

During a hearing last week to modify the suspension, about 80 supporters, including students, faculty and staff, gathered outside the student conduct building on the 2500 block of Channing Way.

Rosenbaum described the order barring all communications with anyone associated with the university as an illegal infringement on Bowin’s rights.

When asked about the restriction, university spokesman Dan Mogoluf said he couldn’t speak about individual student’s disciplinary records but said he does not know of any situation in which the university took action against students for breaking their silence.

“The provisions in the letter are primarily about setting expectations regarding the student’s conduct while under the interim suspension,” said Mogoluf. “At this point the university understands that there is a concern. …That language is now under review in order to ensure it is correctly interpreted in the future.”

Outside the hearing, Steve Rosenbaum, a Berkeley Law lecturer and Bowin’s advisor during the hearing, told the crowd. “He wants to finish his final exams. … He’s got a paper due tomorrow. All of this could have been avoided with informal negotiations.”

The hearing’s administrator allowed Bowin to bring a legal advisor and one family member into the hearing, according to Rosenbaum. During the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, Bowin’s father and brother stood outside while his mom joined him inside. About 10 UCPD officers watched the crowd outside and guarded the doors to the student conduct office. One officer in police uniform, and another UCPD employee who was not wearing a uniform videotaped the hearing, according to Mogoluf who directed all further inquiries about the police department surveillance to police spokesman Lt. Alex Yao.

“We don’t comment on police operations,” said Yao.

At one point the officials told Rosenbaum to leave the hearing because he was being “disruptive.”

“It is a secret tribunal. I can’t believe the greatest public university in the world in the year 2009 — we’re almost 2010 — conducts procedures this way,” said Rosenbaum, who helped revise the student conduct code 30 years ago, “I tried to figure out what it means, you can’t because they make up the rules as they go along. The sole evidence is a press report that he’s going to be a threat to the campus,”

About 40 minutes after Rosenbaum addressed the crowd, Bowin and his mother left the student conduct office. His mother quickly flashed a thumbs-up before joining the rest of her family and Rosenbaum to huddle about the hearing’s outcome.

“The suspension was, I’d say 99 percent lifted,” said Rosenbaum after meeting with Bowin. “I think at the end of the day basically it was a victory. Zach maintained his status as he should.”

Ronald Cruz, an organizer for By Any Means Necessary, asked the panelists to identify themselves as they left the building, but his attempts were rebuffed. A woman believed to be the student representative on the panel told him her identity is confidential.

“I’m glad to be able to contact people,” said Bowin. “It’s not something someone would really say, but I’m happy to get back to my studies.”

David Morse, 41, a reporter for Indymedia, who was also arrested during the Dec. 10 protest, told the Planet he was standing back taking photographs when police took him into custody. He said that he was targeted as a journalist and that his camera and photographs were seized as evidence by a court order.

While no one is currently facing charges for the incidents outside the Chancellor’s home, the university is continuing to investigate. Several students have reported receiving calls from UCPD detectives. But despite the specter of “terrorism” raised by the governor, Mogoluf said the university has not called on state or federal law enforcement to assist in its investigation.

         

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BY JOSH WOLF
Richmond Confidential Staff Writer

Adriel Hampton admits his chances of getting elected to congress are slim, but he hopes his web-centric vision of American politics will serve as a harbinger.

Like most of the candidates running in Tuesday’s special election for the 10th Congressional District, Hampton, a 31-year-old Democrat from Dublin, opposes the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He’s in favor of gay marriage, single-payer health care and is advocating for an end to the War on Drugs.

But it is Hampton’s roots in what’s been coined “Government 2.0,” that set him apart.
Government 2.0 is a movement to apply the framework of Web 2.0, — social networking, open-source software and collaborative communication — to politics and government.

“It gives us the ability to connect with each other. And to see where certain things lie and how we can come together,” said Brooklyn resident Noel Hidalgo, 31, of the New York state senate. “We traditionally would have created this one-way platform, (but) instead these online tools allow us to develop a forum-nature where we can communicate with each other as well as elected officials.”

As the Director of Technology Innovations, Hidalgo created a Web site for the state senate that allows voters to connect with their representative through phone and e-mail, but also Facebook and Twitter.

“Ten years ago a politician who didn’t know how to use e-mail wouldn’t get reelected, and pretty soon it will be the same way for social media,” said D-10 candidate Hampton. “Using Web 2.0 tools to set an agenda, to actually get more voter buy-in, to really use it for governance. I think what I’m trying to do now will become more popular.”

But Jack Pitney, 54, a Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, said Government 2.0 isn’t needed to break down the walls of communication between politicians and their constituents.

“What barrier? Anyone can e-mail members of congress now. In the days of postal mail they were attentive to postal mail,” said Pitney. “Obviously we’d all like immediate face-time with a member of Congress. That isn’t always possible. … There are many many problems with congress but I don’t think a disregard of constituent mail is one of them.”

Hampton acknowledges that it will be difficult to change the paradigm, but he said the potential for Government 2.0 goes well beyond what’s possible through phone calls or e-mail.

He is exploring using MixedInk, a web-based collaborative writing tool, to collectively write legislation with individual groups and constituents. He has also launched an interactive policy page at adriel.nationbuilder.com. Registered visitors to the site can choose to endorse or oppose the priorities that are already listed, or they can add their own agenda.

“A more transparent process would be pretty cool. You’d actually see who had their fingers in the legislation. … Sierra Club wants to mark up my legislation. I’m going to have the final say and everybody is going to see,” said Hampton. “I don’t think congress is going to embrace that. I think that you’re not going to change the status quo by just pushing on the status quo.”

But if Hampton’s ideas for Government 2.0 are liable to challenge the status quo, then a victory by Mark Loos, 46, a Republican candidate from Livermore, could be seen as a declaration of war.

Loos promises to vote the will of his constituents on everything that crosses his desk. He said he plans set up a secure Web site with a list of all the bills and allow every registered voter in his district to have an account.

“However this district wants this question answered, that will be the way I vote. … If the voters are really interested in the process they need to have some sort of benefit to read the bill. That’s why I like putting the teeth in it,” said Loos. “If I (have) to call every voter to get them involved, that’s what I’m going to do, literally.”

But Pitney insists nothing will ever replicate a New England Town Hall Democracy.

“I don’t see anyway that you could return to those days,” said Pitney. “I think the Internet is a wonderful tool. I spend most of my day online, but it does not represent a recreation of human nature.”

         

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton is quoted on Countdown as describing the potential precedent that may have been set when Bill Clinton flew to North Korea to rescue Laura Ling and Euna Lee. While his sentiment that Clinton should have done nothing to free the women is disgusting, his concerns may come to play in the days ahead following the capture of three UC Berkeley graduates on the Iraq-Iran border.

Shane Bauer, a reporter for New America Media, his girlfriend Sarah Shourd, a freelance reporter and their friend Joshua Fattal have apparently been captured by the Iranian government after accidently stumbling across the Iranian border, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sound familiar? But unlike Ling and Lee who work for a company headed by a man who has President Bill Clinton’s cell on his speed dial, these three intrepid travelers must rely on whatever strings Bauer’s small nonprofit employer can muster.

I couldn’t disagree more with the pundits on Fox News and am thankful to have seen Clinton step in to secure Ling and Lee’s freedom, but their concerns over how this will bode for the next group of Americans caught in a similar situation, which has already happened, is not completely irrational.

If asked, should Clinton agree to meet with Mahmud Ahmadinejad to secure the release of Bauer, Shourd, and Fattal? Would he be willing to step in for a repeat performance?

Or would that set a dangerous precedent equitable to negotiating with terrorists?

         

In the City of San Mateo you can pick up three different daily newspapers for free. Or, you can drop a dollar for the San Francisco Chronicle, which raised its rate today (though the newsrack I found was still only charging $.75)

Meanwhile, the Chronicle is trying to experiment by offering a weekly column by Phil Bronstein that will only appear in print. As if Bronstein alone can save a newspaper that decided to raise prices because not enough people want to pay for it.

There’s been a lot of clamoring that the only way to stem off this plague that’s killed newspaper after newspaper is to start charging for online content. It almost makes sense, people don’t want to pay for something they can get for free so if you charge them to read it online both sides of the business should benefit right?

I doubt it. I suspect that charging for online access will simply result in fewer informed people and more people turning to cable news in lieu of newspapers.

Why? Because people will gladly pay money for their MTV and VH1 celebreality melee. They’ll even check out the news that comes with their cable from time to time. But how many people would pay extra if the news stations were an ala-carte package? Not many, and most of them would probably be in their 30s and above.

That doesn’t mean that young people aren’t interested in the news. Most of us just aren’t willing to pay for it. Everyone I know will grab the local weekly and thumb through it, often cover-to-cover. Our news is filtered through blogs, twitter, and original news websites on a constant basis, and it doesn’t seem like the internet has made us less informed.

But it has made us cheap. Napster taught us we didn’t have to pay for music and newspapers themselves conditioned us to the idea that news should be free. Napster’s gone, of course, but between Pandora, Hulu, and a myriad of other web applications, it’s difficult to persuade us to pay money for something that we can’t feel between our fingers.

Does this mean that we should just accept the death of newspapers and move on? I don’t think so. The Daily Post, The Daily News, and The Daily Journal all distribute free newspapers along the mid-peninsula and the business model appears to be successful.

Until earlier this month I wrote for the Daily Post, and the experience helped me understand that a newspaper serves a role in the community the way a website probably never will. And a free newspaper, especially in transit-rich communities, will be read by almost everyone, from the very rich to the very poor.

Poor circulation may have squeezed the life out of the newspaper business, but if the Chronicle wanted to do a real experiment — instead of trying to figure out whether anyone besides Bronstein’s own family will pay a $1 to read his column — they should try giving the paper away for free and sell more advertising to cover the costs associated with putting out the paper.

         

The following was excerpted from an e-mail I sent Ryan Tate of Gawker after reading his post about David Simon’s testimony at a Senate hearing on the future of newspapers May 6.

As far as the whole issue of bloggers attending city council meetings and what not… the fact of the matter is that bloggers can and do play a watchdog role, but it is rarely sustainable on a full-time basis, and watching city hall can be a full-time job. Yes, some people are probably managing to cover it with the depth and regularity of whatever the daily rag happens to be in that town, but again, it is the rare case where this is sustainable for any long period.

That said, while there are a number of news Web sites that are able to generate enough revenue to pay employees a living wage, I don’t know of any good examples of a local news site. Advertising on the Web only seems to be practical on a scale that doesn’t seem realistic for local content.

If anything is Google’s fault. This is where it happens. By owning the advertising market and garnering a small slice off every ad on the internet, it was to Google’s advantage to drive down the cost of advertising to the point that it became ubiquitous. Sure, they created an open market, but they did so in such a way that created a race to the top, but a race to the bottom.

Now advertising on the Web is so affordable, that I could take a month’s paycheck and probably buy a million “quality” impressions. Compare that to the cost of a million impressions through print publications and you’ll see why Google may not have violated their ‘do no evil’ mantra, we certainly can no longer say they’ve done no harm.

         

The North Korean government has announced that two American journalists who were captured near the Chinese border will stand trial for entering the country illegally.

The two reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, are employed by Al Gore’s San Francisco-based cable outlet Current TV. They were arrested on March 17 while reporting from the frozen Tumen, which forms the border between China and North Korea. They were working on a story about North Korean refugees.

But one would never know that two of Current’s reporters could spend the next five to ten years in a North Korean labor camp by visiting the company’s Web Site. In fact, Pacifica has confirmed that any effort to publicize the plight of the two reporters in the company’s online forums is quickly scrubbed from the site.

Current TV has not issued a public statement about its reporters and repeated calls seeking comment have gone unreturned. When journalist Ian Port visited Current’s headquarters, he was told to turn off his camera and asked to leave.

The company’s silence has generated concern from reporters and press activists around the world. Curt Hopkins, the Executive Director for the Committee to Protect Bloggers, told Pacifica that while security experts sometimes recommend keeping quiet to ensure the quick return of captives, the silence could actually delay their release.

Hopkins: We were told by people in larger organizations than our own that the best thing to do is to kind of shut up and if you just don’t stir up anything, they’ll be released. I’m sure that does happen every once in a while, and I’m also certain that given former Vice President’s Gore’s connection with diplomatic circles that probably every diplomatic thing is being done. However, there’s just a tendency in general to advocate for silence, and my experience, having been contacted as the head of the Committee to Protect Bloggers by a number of different people who knew they were going to be questioned by the security forces in their country, they said to me, ‘don’t do anything right now, but if you don’t hear from me in 48 hours just sound the alarm as loud as you possibly could’

Hopkins said that Current’s decision to censor comments posted on its Web site about its imprisoned reporters leaves him feeling like the company has abandoned its reporters.

Hopkins: I just think it makes them an organization, which no reasonable journalist, whether citizen or professional, would have anything to do with, because whatever is going on behind the scenes, and it may be quite a lot, I don’t know, but I’m not going to take that chance. I won’t work for them. Because for all I know their main consideration is their IPO. They don’t have so much as a badge on their site that says ‘don’t forget these two’. … If I’m working for you, you owe me. If I’m risking myself and going to strange situations and so on, I’m not just in your debt, you’re in my debt and you damn well better step up if something like this happens.

Robert Wood, a spokesperson for the State Department said at a press conference today that the United States is quietly working to secure the release of Lee and Ling.

Wood: The best I can tell you is we’ve seen these reports. And again, we continue to call on the North Koreans to release the two Americans so they can be returned to their families. We’ll continue to work this issue through diplomatic channels. As I’ve said we’re trying to work this quietly and we’re going to continue to work it, but I don’t have much to say beyond that right now.

But with no formal diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea, the process of negotiating their release is difficult. John Feffer is the Co-director of Foreign Policy and Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He says that Current’s decision not to comment may be the best approach to secure their release.

Feffer: Once you raise a public human cry, you may very well block the option of pursuing quiet diplomacy, so I think most folks concerned with the case are trying, at least at this point, to see what can be done quietly, and I think that’s appropriate. … Pursuing the quiet approach, at least at this point, seems to promise the greatest likelihood of success.

Robert Mahoney, the deputy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists told Pacifica that while there have been indications that Lee and Ling are being treated humanely, neither humanitarian groups nor the US Government have been granted access to them. A Swedish representative did visit the two reporters last month.

Mahoney: North Korea is probably the most heavily censored country in the world. It doesn’t have any press except for government press and so therefore it’s an extremely difficult country to report from. We have seen that these two journalists were detained on the border with china in circumstances which, as far as we can tell, are not fully explained. It therefore is extremely difficult to get information about them and to work for their release with a government that has a history of not taking the world’s opinion into consideration.

Reporter’s without Borders has created a petition of journalists and bloggers calling for the release of the two Current reporters.

Brendan McShane Creamer, a Philadelphia resident who knows Laura Ling’s sister Lisa, has created a Facebook group about the plight of thejournalists, which now has more than 2,500 members calling for theirrelease.

Creamer has organized a candle-light vigil in front of Current TV’s San Francisco headquarters at 7 o’clock Tuesday night, and another vigil will be held at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks California at the same time.

Creamer: I decided Current would be a great place to start and then Del Campo High School is where Laura Ling attended high school, and Lisa Ling also attended there. I’ve been in contact with Lisa Ling and so, with her permission and everything, I’ve been putting information out on the group page on Facebook and e-mailing people. She just sent me a message to send out to everyone on Facebook, on the group page, and she has it posted on her page, thanking everyone for this vigil, and stating the reasons why she can’t come out in public and be in the public eye in regards to this story.

On May 21, another vigil will be held in New York City in front of MSNBC, which is being organized by retired JAG lawyer and legal analyst Gwendolyn Lindsay Jackson.

Jackson told Pacifica that she felt compelled to do whatever she can to help Ling and Lee return home safe and return home soon.

Jackson: I just really feel for these families and I feel for these women, because they can’t be forgotten. Commonsense would tell you that if you forget about somebody it doesn’t go away if you sweep it under the rug. Clearly if efforts were being made behind the scenes during the height of the scare with the North Koreans launching that rocket a few weeks ago, well that’s already happened, its done, things should have moved on by now. The longer this drags on, the more worrisome it becomes for me, as a human being.

For Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, I’m Josh Wolf

         

It’s been more than two weeks since Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained by North Korea and it now appears that they will stand trial for a charge that faces up to a ten year sentence, but Al Gore’s cable network Current hasn’t said a word. Numerous journalists have called, myself included, but I haven’t even found a single recent report where Current has even responded with, “no comment.”

The network has also been censoring any posts in it’s online community that discuss the situation, as reported here:

http://joshwolf.net/blog/?p=399
http://tinyurl.com/cvxgfn
http://twitter.com/DeliaTheArtist/statuses/1366174843

That last link is a tweet from last Sunday, which would indicate Current has been scrubbing their site for more than a week.

I understand that it is a sensitive situation, made doubly so by the fact that a former Vice President is involved, but at this point any hopes Current may have had to resolve this before it became an “international incident,” have long since passed the point of reason, and their attempts to silence their own community about what’s going on with two of their reporters is appeasement to North Korea’s demands at best, and at worst, it’s 1984 playing out in real time — though admittedly current is a private news station and Al Gore isn’t a government official, anymore.

As the SF Weekly pointed out on a blog last week, typically when a reporter is kidnapped — arrested for committing journalism — or just finds themselves in a crisis situation while working, the news agency will immediately release a statement of some sort acknowledging the situation and often sending good wishes. In some cases, reporters will be dispatched to uncover why it happened and what is likely to happen in the future. Maybe even get reaction from it’s audience — we are talking web 2.0 after all.

But instead Current TV has remained silent leaving who knows how many phone calls unreturned while they work to erase any mention of the situation from their site.

There may be a good reason that Current hasn’t commented on the situation, perhaps some tentative secret agreement has been reached with North Korea, I don’t know.

At this point I have my doubts, but even still, the very least they can do is give me a call to tell me, “For reasons which cannot be addressed at this time, Current not have any comment regarding the question you have asked.”

To go just one small step further in the spirit of honest communication they can put a disclaimer on their site that says: “Some content on the site is being held due to concerns that we can’t talk about right now. Don’t worry, you’re stuff isn’t gone, and we’ll unhide as much of it as we can, just as soon as we can.”

They could also start returning media calls with a ‘no comment,’ and offer to send them an e-mail as soon as the company issues a statement or is ready to talk.

The last thing I want to do is jeopardize the safe and immediate return of Ling and Lee, but I feel that Current should be held accountable for their complete inability to address this pressing situation.