Mark Hanis - Mark Hanis founded the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) to provide ordinary citizens with tools to prevent and stop genocide.
GI-Net's goal is to change the way the United States and the international community respond to the world's worst crime. GI-Net's aim is to recruit a committed and diverse group of individuals and communities to form an active network that realizes the never in never again.
GI-Net members educate their communities, lobby their elected officials, and fund raise directly for civilian protection.
As a grandchild of four Holocaust survivors with a background in human rights, Hanis was compelled to focus on genocide prevention. A recent Swarthmore College graduate, Hanis has been featured in The New York Times and The New Republic, and has appeared on CNN Headline News and NPR.
Jason Rosenthal - Jason Rosenthal is Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Ning, Inc. where he is responsible for all outbound and customer facing activities at the company. Previously, Rosenthal was Vice President of HP Software's Business Service Automation product line which encompasses the former Opsware product portfolio (acquired by HP for $1.6B) and leading solutions in the storage management, desktop management, and mobile device management space.
Rosenthal holds a BA in history from Pomona College where he also serves on the board of trustees and he received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Susan Tenby - Susan Tenby is Senior Manager for Online Community Development at TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life.
She frequently speaks at conferences and has testified before Congress about work in virtual worlds.
Eric Volz - Eric Volz is an American who was falsely accused and ultimately convicted to a 30 year sentence for rape and murder in Nicaragua in Nov 2006. From http://www.friendsorericvolz.com, a website created in his mother’s living room, a phenomenal world-wide movement emerged that brought together the international community in support of human rights by leveraging the social networking tools of the web to create solidarity and fight for justice.
The growth of this community not only sustained Volz in jail but eventually caught the attention of international headlines, pressuring the highest levels of both the US and Nicaraguan governments to resolve the matter and bringing about his release from prison in late December 2007.
Volz is now working to launch a SOS Strategy Center designed to assist primarily (but not limited to) citizens of the United States and Puerto Rico who find themselves in trouble abroad. Specific to the work of the SOS Strategy Center are cases that have political undertones, which complicate the ability to secure a fair trial and due process.
Recent innovations in science and technology have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and to disseminate this information in real time throughout the world.
The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley is pleased to showcase these recent developments and push new frontiers of applied research.
I looked up Eric Volz prior to watching this video and I was appalled at the injustice that he received. I watched the youtube videp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YChhOHrFA4 to get a better sense of what had happened.
I cannot believe that the Nicaraguan court did not present any actual evidence of Eric committing the murder and dismissed the 100 forensic samples that proved Eric was not at the scene of the crime as well as his phone records that proved his innocence. Had they proceeded the legal way, there would not have been a case and they would have caught the actual perpetrator. But it seems they were more interested in having big newspaper headlines rather than putting the real murderer behind bars. And it's a wonder because Nicaragua has the lowest crime rate Central America.
Is the Nicaraguan government that absurdly blind and dim witted? What if Eric Volz did not own a website? He probably would still be in jail for a wrongdoing that he did not commit. The Nicaraguan court sickens me.
I am glad that Eric Volz did not have to spend thirty years in jail. Wasn't there a way for Eric to get tried on American soil and have more of a fair trial? I would like to know when he was released and finally deemed innocent.
This reminds me of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, two American journalists from CurrentTV that were both found guilty of 'hostile acts' when they had mistakenly bypassed North Korea's border. First of all, if you're going to be a hardcore government and arrest everyone that crosses over to your border, it would be essential to have landmarks to separate the two countries to know which people are really trying to do you harm vs. the ones that just didn't know any better. I am just saying. Now, the most screwed up part from set article, http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...888004,00.html, is that it states that 'Observers expect the two American reporters now being detained for "illegally intruding" into the North will become a pawn to be used by Pyongyang at an opportune political moment.' Tell me this isn't true.
In these two cases, if foreign countries took the time to look up the arrested international background, they would realize that their initial intention is to accumulate information for their site while making sure that they are not break any foreign laws. In Euna Lee and Laura Ling case, I would imagine they would still get tried but with that tidbit of background, hopefully, they would be given some lenience.
The reason Nicaragua has one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America is due to its political regime which constrains both illegal activity and expression of personal freedoms. In fact often Nicargua's sandinista government confuses both of the notions. That's exactly what happened in the case of Eric Volz; moreover, as Eric mentions, the incident took place right after D. Ortega's re-election. During that time it was very important for a communist leader to show its power and ability to confront Western world. He did the same thing when he recognized South Ossetia's independence along with Russia when nobody else did.
