tagged w/ Censorship
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The internet is the most important innovation for democracy of our time. With the internet citizens are empowered to be creators of information, not just passive consumers, and they’re networked so exchange happens peer-to-peer, not through some central authority.The internet is the most important innovation for democracy of our time. With the... more
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David Cameron was advised against blocking access to BlackBerry, Facebook and Twitter services during the August riots it has emerged.
Chief executive of free speech lobby group Index on Censorship, John Kampfner, has told the UK media that Cameron wanted to limit access to social media services to prevent looting attacks spreading further around the country.
According to an article in The Telegraph, Foreign Secretary William Hague warned the Prime Minister off the move amid fears it would lead to accusations of hypocrisy from China and Syria, whose free speech record has come under attack from the UK.
Discussions on how to deal with the riots were held during meetings of crisis response committee COBRA on August 9th.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8862335/Cameron-told-not-to-shut-down-internet.htmlDavid Cameron was advised against blocking access to BlackBerry, Facebook and Twitter... more
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Though the search engine giant did not comply with those specific requests, a bigger concern is over how Google chooses which requests for "removal of content" it decides to honor, and which ones they refuse. After all, the report also shows that the company "complied" with 63% requests for content removal, and over 90% of "requests for user data."
http://veracitystew.com/2011/10/31/google-police-want-brutality-videos-removed/Though the search engine giant did not comply with those specific requests, a bigger... more
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As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment.
Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act").
The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry wanted the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America.
And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff.
And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to:
A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.
On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it:
To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief....
against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.
While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors.
The only extraordinarily minor change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like.
Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review.
And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it also lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online.
This bill is an abomination and an insult to the Constitution. It's unfortunate that Rep. Lamar Smith thinks this is worth introducing in its current state, and anyone who signs on to co-sponsor is effectively supporting mass censorship of the internet in the US, as well as the criminalization of huge numbers of Americans -- while putting a huge burden on the one part of the economy that actually is creating jobs. All because a few legacy companies in the entertainment industry refuse to adapt.
E-PARASITES Act;
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111026/12130616523/protect-ip-renamed-e-parasites-act-would-create-great-firewall-america.shtmlAs was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released... more
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A bit of an emergency: The rumor all over Capitol Hill is that the House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill will be introduced this week, probably on Wednesday.
Our allies on the Hill say the bill's so bad that it could effectively destroy Youtube, Twitter, and other sites that rely on user-generated content by making the sites' owners legally responsible for everything their users post.
Nobody will want to take that risk, so sites like Youtube and Twitter could be forced to shut down.
Facebook, Myspace, and Google+ would be at risk. The cyberlocker and streaming provisions could affect your iPhone, Android, AmazonCloud, Pandora, Grooveshark and even your email accounts.
It also includes provisions that would make it a felony to stream unlicensed content -- including cover band performances, karaoke videos, video game play-throughs, and more.
And all of this is being driven by a few major corporations who are trying to protect their private profits.
Will you use the form at right to ask your Congressmember not to cosponsor the legislation, at least until they've heard our concerns?
(click on the link to access the links with which you can post this on your facebook and twitter, and access the above-mentioned form)A bit of an emergency: The rumor all over Capitol Hill is that the House version of... more
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Officials at the state environmental agency in Texas have altered a scientific report they commissioned on Galveston bay, deleting mentions of human-induced climate change and rising sea levels.
The 2010 State of the Bay report has been delayed for a year by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center, who are contracted to provide the state with regular reports on the bay.
John Anderson, an oceanographer at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who wrote the chapter of the report that was apparently edited by TCEQ management, told British newspaper The Guardian that the cuts reflected what he called "denial" throughout the state of Texas about the effects of global warming.
The TCEQ is headed by Bryan Shaw, known for saying that scientific arguments that human activities are changing the climate are a hoax. He was appointed by Texas governor Rick Perry, who has publicly said that such science is inconclusive.
"They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence - it was edited or eliminated," Anderson told The Guardian. "That's not scientific review, that's just straightforward censorship."
The three scientists involved in the paper have asked that their names be removed from the edited version of the publication, reports the Houston Chronicle. "We feel it would impact our credibility as scientists on something where the data on sea-level rise has been censored," said Jim Lester, the vice-president of the research center and editor of the report.
News organisation Mother Jones has published the report with tracked changes made by two of Shaw's collegues, the director of water quality planning, Kelly Holligan, and her assistant director, Katherine Nelson.
TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow told the Houston Chronicle in an email that the agency disagreed with information in the article, saying: "It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it."
But the changes made by Holligan and Nelson go against known scientific evidence. In addition to editing references to the role humans play in climate change, they deleted a sentence noting that water levels in the bay have been rising five times faster than the long-term average.
"There's no denying the fact that sea-level rise has significantly accelerated. The scientific community is not at all divided on that issue," Anderson told Mother Jones.
"I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change," he told the Houston Chronicle. "It's not about the science. It's all politics."
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/10/texas-officials-censored-clima.htmlOfficials at the state environmental agency in Texas have altered a scientific report... more
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arkana
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7 months ago
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Professor says state agency censored article
By HARVEY RICE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 09:38 p.m., Monday, October 10, 2011
GALVESTON - A long-awaited report on Galveston Bay is being delayed by accusations that Texas' environmental agency deleted references from a scientific article to climate change, people's impact on the environment and sea-level rise.
John Anderson, the Maurice Ewing professor of oceanography at Rice University and author of the article, accused the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality of basing its decision to delete certain references on politics rather than science.
"I don't think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change," Anderson said. "It's not about the science. It's all politics."
The article has several references to climate change but does not say it is caused by humans. However, other references to the impact people have had on the environment were deleted by TCEQ.
TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow gave no reason for the deletions in an e-mail response, saying only that the agency disagreed with information in the article.
"It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it," she said.
Editors also rap agency
Anderson said TCEQ prevented the article - written for a report by the agency's Galveston Bay Estuary Program - from being published without the deletions. That, and Anderson's refusal to accept the changes, have held up publication of The State of the Bay
TCEQ contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce the report two years ago; the research center asked Anderson to write an article on sea-level rise in Galveston Bay. The research center received the final edited version of his article about three months ago, Anderson said.
Jim Lester, vice president of the research center and editor of the publication, said he, co-editor Lisa Gonzalez and Anderson have advised TCEQ officials that they do not want their names associated with the edited version.
"We feel it would impact our credibility as scientists on something where the data on sea-level rise has been censored," Lester said. He said the report would have been published a year ago, if not for the disagreement.
A 10-year study
Anderson wrote to TCEQ Commissioner Buddy Garcia Aug. 30 complaining about the censorship, including as an example the deletion of a section saying the ocean level in Galveston Bay is rising by 3 millimeters a year, compared with the long-term average of 0.5 millimeters.
"The sea level rates presented in this chapter are scientific fact, not speculation," he wrote to Garcia.
"Preventing me from publishing this chapter in its current form is a clear case of censorship, which we academicians take very seriously. I would hope that you will intervene at this point and assure that publication of The State of the Bay is no longer delayed."
Anderson said he has not heard from Garcia, although TCEQ's spokeswoman said someone from Garcia's office had tried to reach him.
Anderson said the article is a synopsis of a 10-year study he and other scientists conducted, published by the Geological Society of America. The study was peer-reviewed, meaning it was critically reviewed by other scientists.
He said TCEQ never offered an explanation for the deletions.
"They just went through the document and deleted, deleted, deleted," he said.
Lester said TCEQ officials made it clear the agency is uncomfortable with any references to human-caused climate change.
"We stayed away from human-induced climate change, but we felt like we had to talk about sea-level rise," he said. "After all, it's been happening for 12,000 years. We were surprised the data on sea-level rise became a contentious issue."
TCEQ also deleted any references to human-caused change in other contexts, including a reference to human activity being responsible for wetlands destruction.
"I think that we're seeing an expression of the ideology of the TCEQ leadership," Lester said. "I can't think of any other reason why these would be contentious issues."
harvey.rice@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Professor-says-state-agency-censored-article-2212118.phpProfessor says state agency censored article
By HARVEY RICE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE... more
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In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.
The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.
Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.
Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.
The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.
When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”
We then click through to learn that, “YouTube occasionally receives requests from governments around the world to remove content from our site, and as a result, YouTube may block specific content in order to comply with local laws in certain countries.”
You can also search by country to discover that Google, the owner of You Tube, has complied with the majority of requests from governments, particularly in the United States and the UK, not only to remove You Tube videos, but also specific web search terms and thousands of “data requests,” meaning demands for information that would reveal the true identity of a You Tube user. Google claims that the information sent to governments is “needed for legitimate criminal investigations,” but whether these “data requests” have been backed up by warrants is not divulged by the company.
“Between July 1 and Dec. 31 (2009), Google received 3,580 requests for user data from U.S. government agencies........
Continue at:
http://theintelhub.com/2011/05/20/government-orders-you-tube-to-censor-protest-videos/In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free... more
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Note: Just because you don’t operate any kind of piracy site DOESN’T mean it won’t effect your innocent little political blog. It WILL effect you too because Obama wants to usher in a World Dictatorship that George W. Bush failed at because he was well hated and without the false messiah Obama everyone would have forcefully thrown Bush out so that’s why Obamas succeeding better then Bush has.
At first I thought it was just domain names the Government can shut down at Will and now without due process they can shut down any blogs they desire under the guise (aka excuse) of stopping Warez and Piracy, even shut down entire blog hosts with literally tens to hundreds of thousands of legitimate blog users without a second thought. This will begin to stifle Online Free Speech, and may mean the death of websites such as Prison Planet, InfoWars, Campaign for Liberty, even USWGO, and will mean the total elimination of alternative media plus ways of freely promoting your website and even the truth altogether.
I tried to warn people that the 9 piracy sites being taken down swiftly is a silent threat of what the Obama Administration will do to truth sites which is already going on by shutting down blog hosts but nobody took me seriously. Will people ever take this dangerous situation to blogs seriously until Prison Planet domain gets seized, until USWGO’s domain gets seized, and until federaljack’s domain gets seized by the Government. Will people then take this false war on piracy which is really a excuse to shut down blogs all over the Internet seriously?
In TorrentFreak (original article here) they have reported that over 73,000 blogs hosted by Blogetery (All are NOT illegal and the Government knows that) have been chopped up and thrown to the wind including the USWGO Syndication Center of Blogetery which means that USWGOS Main pagerank hurt a certain percentage which makes it more impossible to bring out the truth since nobody may even see it, curious viewers will have a harder time finding our truth articles, and has further made it even harder for USWGO to bring out the truth to massive amounts of people without being labeled as a spammer and thrown in a cell block. Although I am planning to dupe the elite controlled pageranking system by just going outside to go across the country and implementing truth posters and truth cards all over American states including Arizona to persuade people to go against the new world order unless something goes wrong like ICE seizes my website using the hate crimes bill. I am risking my domain being seized by the FBI special forces to stop these neo Dictators and now the federal Government has the power to shut down any blog at will and it’s all apart of Obamas cybersecurity powers.
Also Facebook has also as well suspended Alex Jones over the famous “Don’t tread on me!” Yellow Gadsden flag being in his own profile. This means using the crises of warez and all forms of piracy (including porn) they are preparing attacks against not just warez related sites but also using this as a perfect excuse to shake down and take down political websites (Any that is anti-obama or anti-elite) as well. Also during the Bush Administration, the RIAA President and even Alberto Gonzales used child porn and terrorism to attempt to force Net Monitoring and controls which failed because nobody wanted to go along with controlling and Micro managing Everybody online just to stop a small minority of sickos (The elite are sickos as well) which would mean honest/Innocent folks would be completely controlled like robots plus treated like criminals before even committing a crime which goes along with precrime.
Rahm Emanuel stated that “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” public on TV. So since the Bush Administration failed at convincing ISPs to control the Net under the guise to protect children now Obama is using cybersecurity and putting an end to Piracy forever but by the time hes done with his wreck-less takedowns there won’t be any web hosts left, or even blog hosts. If there will be any left it will all be controlled and constantly moderated by elite teams of people so they WILL kiss Obamas butt then you kiss your blog goodbye.
If Obama has his way under the guise to stopping all piracy, he could shut down all over 200,000 blogs hosted by wordpress.com and end many 9/11 truthers for good since there’s plenty of anti new world order blogs on there. It is wreck-less to take down 73,000 blogs just to stop a minority of piracy or criminal sites that could have easily been taken down individually but it all makes sense to a dictator to use Piracy as an excuse to shut down millions of websites and end the Obama Deception since it exposes his crimes. Just like how they use wanting to use the children (Which in a way is child exploitation for political gain) to control all information and install Chinese style censorship filtering systems run by a tiny elite.
The question is will we let Obama have his way this time, will we let him use Piracy and child exploitation (Just like Bush did) to shut down millions of political blogs (A alternative media blackout) and throw many of us in Interment Camps aka Concentration Camps just for standing up against totalitarian Authority.
It’s as Alex Jones says the Police State isn’t coming it’s already here and we been battling it for decades to prevent the final trigger from being pulled by the treasonous elite. Once the final trigger has been pulled there will be so much bloodshed and massive gathering centers with forced vaccinations plus more horrors.
What we are now seeing isn’t a War on Piracy but it is actually a War On Blogs! Obama will commence this war on the American people for support of and in favor of communism style controls. This is the new War on Terror! even far worse then torture, the naked body scanners or even bans on being allowed to sale pets at pet shops to force everybody to go to the pound.
Crimes and torture will only increase if crimes aren’t being stopped and if Obama is given too much power to freely commit crimes we are screwed.
http://uswgo.com/obama-administration-can-shut-down-any-blog-host-and-millions-of-blogs-at-will-war-on-blogs.htmNote: Just because you don’t operate any kind of piracy site DOESN’T mean... more
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http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/09/20/323856/yahoo-censoring-occupy-wall-street-protests/
I can tell you, after hearing a rumor that YAHOO mail would not let users send an email containing "occupywallst.org", i tried numerous times and can verify: Absolutely true. I could send anything else. I must have made over ten attempts. This morning, YAHOO mail (for the first ime in my long history with them) would not let me send ANY messages. They all got the same response: http://twitpic.com/6nx7u0
Boycotting YAHOO now. Hope you do too.
~~~
Thinking about e-mailing your friends and neighbors about the protests against Wall Street happening right now? If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, think again. ThinkProgress has reviewed claims that Yahoo is censoring e-mails relating to the protest and found that after several attempts on multiple accounts, we too were prevented from sending messages about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.
Over the weekend, thousands gathered for a “Tahrir Square”-style protest of Wall Street’s domination of American politics. The protesters, organized online and by organizations like Adbusters, have called their effort “Occupy Wall Street” and have set up the website: www.OccupyWallSt.org. However, several YouTube users posted videos of themselves trying to email a message inviting their friends to visit the Occupy Wall St campaign website, only to be blocked repeatedly by Yahoo. View a video of ThinkProgress making the attempt with the same blocked message experienced by others.
ThinkProgress tried other protest websites, like AmericansforProsperity.org and TeaPartyPatriots.org, and both messages were sent smoothly. However, emails relating to the OccupyWallSt.org protest were blocked with the following message (emphasis added):
Your message was not sent
Suspicious activity has been detected on your account. To protect your account and our users, your message has not been sent.
If this error continues, please contact Yahoo! Customer Care for further help.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
ThinkProgress has sent a request for more information to Yahoo, and will post any reply once we have received it with Yahoo’s explanation for its apparent censorship.
It’s not the first time Yahoo has been accused of political censorship. Yahoo officially partners with the repressive Chinese regime to provide the government with access to emails related to groups viewed as dissidents. An explosive investigation by Der Spiegel found that Yahoo provided Chinese authorities with access to emails from journalists, and the snooping resulted in the same journalists being sent to prison camps.
The Occupy Wall Street protests have continued, but if you own a Yahoo e-mail account, you might not know about it.
UPDATE
We’re continuing to monitor Yahoo’s mail service and have now been able to send messages containing the phrase “Occupy Wall Street” and its website on some Yahoo accounts. On other accounts, however, Yahoo is still blocking the messages.
UPDATE
Yahoo’s customer care Twitter account acknowledges blocking the emails, but says it was an unintentional error:
“We apologize 4 blocking ‘occupywallst.org’ It was not intentional & caught by our spam filters. It is resolved, but may be a residual delay.”
Yahoo’s main Twitter account adds:
“Thanks to @YahooMail users & @ThinkProgress for catching problem w/ #Occupywallst.org mail. Prob is fixed, but there may be residual delays.”http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/09/20/323856/yahoo-censoring-occupy-wall-street-pro... more
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Pro-Israel organizations pressured an Oakland children’s museum to cancel an upcoming exhibition of drawings made by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Community leaders say the shutting down of the exhibition is the result of a disturbing — and well-funded — campaign to silence Palestinian voices across the US.
On 8 September, just two weeks before the exhibition was set to open to the public, the board of directors of the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) announced that they had canceled “A Child’s View of Gaza.” The board shut down the show due to pressure from “constituents,” according to a statement made by Randolph Bell, the board’s chairman, in the San Francisco Chronicle (“Oakland museum cancels Palestinian kids’ war art,” 9 September 2011).
The show was curated in partnership with the Berkeley-based non-profit group Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), which has been working for 23 years to advocate for Palestinian, Iraqi and Lebanese children’s rights. Barbara Lubin, MECA’s executive director, told The Electronic Intifada that it was “upsetting and infuriating” that the show was canceled, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Anybody who knows this issue knows that the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs have launched a multi-million dollar project to combat what they call the ‘delegitmization’ of Israel,” Lubin said. “They try and suffocate the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and censor Palestinian cultural initiatives. What they’re doing is financing the work of silencing and shutting down anyone who wants to talk about what’s really happening to Palestinians.”
In years past, MOCHA had successfully exhibited strikingly similar artwork by children in Iraq who drew from their personal experiences of war following the 2003 US-led invasion and subsequent occupation. Another exhibition several years ago showed artwork by children made during the Second World War that “featured images of Hitler, burning airplanes, sinking battleships, empty houses and a sad girl next to a Star of David,” the Chronicle added.Pro-Israel organizations pressured an Oakland children’s museum to cancel an... more
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Ryan Dawson had his highly controversial film on 9/11, the Iraq War and the 2001 Anthrax Attacks censored by YouTube on 9/11.
Just a week ago, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) protested the movie and attacked the maker of the movie instead of explaining what was the problem with the movie. The BBC copyright issue it claims is the infamous clip of WTC7 falling being reported falling when it was still there its in thousands of other videos.
This movie is still available for viewing on other channels, but there will most likely be a purge by YouTube as this is a movie that the criminals who carried out 9/11, organized the Iraq war and who are behind the 2001 Anthrax Attacks definitely do not want people to see.Ryan Dawson had his highly controversial film on 9/11, the Iraq War and the 2001... more
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Images are powerful and can control your subconscious. Think about the images of Jesus on the Cross, or Holocaust victims or starving children in Africa, or even the Twin Towers falling or the of a mosque at Ground Zero. That is how powerful images are to the subconscious mind. They transmit emotions and enable you to take action if warranted.Images are powerful and can control your subconscious. Think about the images of Jesus... more
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mab001
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9 months ago
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As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Americans will be taking measure of our government’s response to those events. To be sure, the American reaction included selflessness, dedication, and bravery, but it also included some harebrained and counterproductive steps. As John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot teach us, one of the strengths of a democracy is its ability to engage in candid self-assessment — “government by discussion” — in order to ascertain where those in power have made mistakes, and to correct their errors.
Mistakes are inevitable in government. What is essential is that they be identified, and that steps be taken to avoid their institutionalization or repetition. This process is impeded by the natural tendency of the powerful to try to limit critical discussion so that they may avoid embarrassment and the political costs that democracy exacts from leaders who have erred. But one of the fundamental distinctions between an authoritarian society and a genuine democracy is precisely that a democracy forces truth to the surface and weighs it as essential to the nation’s political dialogue.
The heavy hand of censorship has never been wielded more clumsily by the nation’s intelligence community than it is being wielded right now. Scott Shane of the New York Times brought a striking example to light on Friday, in a report on the CIA’s efforts to suppress a forthcoming book by former FBI agent Ali Soufan:
In what amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda.
The agent, Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the C.I.A. missed a chance to derail the 2001 plot by withholding from the F.B.I. information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego, according to several people who have read the manuscript. And he gives a detailed, firsthand account of the C.I.A.’s move toward brutal treatment in its interrogations, saying the harsh methods used on the agency’s first important captive, Abu Zubaydah, were unnecessary and counterproductive.
Nothing in Soufan’s argument is really new. The accusations concerning the two al Qaeda operatives in Southern California, for example, figure heavily in a documentary for which former Bush Administration counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke was interviewed. In an excerpt recently aired on a PBS affiliate in Colorado, Clarke reveals his suspicion that the CIA was attempting to recruit and turn the two operatives, and that the Agency suppressed information about its egregious error afterward. As Clarke notes, the affair escaped detection in the various probes undertaken after 9/11, including the 9/11 Commission report (.pdf). His comments track Lawrence Wright’s analysis in the award-winning book The Looming Tower. These potentially explosive revelations have so far drawn very little attention from major American broadcast and print media.........
Continue at:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/08/hbc-90008214As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Americans will be taking measure of our... more
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Defend Wisconsin News Round Up - Under Attack From Facebook? (with UPDATES)
Yesterday, I was informed by Facebook that Wisconsin News Round Up was banned from posting on other Facebook pages for 15 days. During this period, I am also not able to leave comments on other pages. Should DWNRU be accused of spamming others following this 15 day period, DWNRU would be banned from Facebook entirely. While I'm glad to know that there is a way to leave Facebook, this is a very serious matter.
At Defend Wisconsin News Round Up, we provide our readers with daily round up of news relevant to Wisconsin Protests. DWNRU also publishes original editorials by local Janesville area authors, since February 16, 2011. DWNRU is not affiliated with any group or political party and is interested in informing and educating. Round Up also does not practice censorship and its contributors are able to post without having their work previewed. This is done with the goal to attract a wide range of authors sharing various views with large audience.
Defend Wisconsin News Round Up reaches its readers predominantly through Facebook. Posting links on walls of others is standard procedure on Facebook. This is how news spreads on Facebook. Yet somehow Round Up posts have been marked as "spam". This triggered aforementioned response from Facebook.
Let's be honest. Without this system of information delivery, a standalone blog would have an immensely harder time reaching the site traffic numbers we generate. Though it is not clear exactly what triggered this response from Facebook, lacking this distribution mechanism, such ban could harm much more than Defend Wisconsin News Round Up. In fact, anecdotal evidence suggests that Defend Wisconsin News Round Up is only the latest site affected by this Facebook policy.
This indiscriminate action puts in danger valuable gains in communication social media helped create. Known for its mobilizing capacity, Facebook in this instance, is in fact, demobilizing. At this important moment in our state's history, that is worse than unfortunate.
This error needs to be addressed and I hope you will join me in calling on Facebook to reverse this ban. I am confident that Facebook engineers can come up with a solution that would let free speech thrive while protecting consumers from unwanted commercial messages.
In the meantime, Defend Wisconsin News Round Up appreciates your help in sharing our posts. We in turn look to make the time you spend at our website, worthwhile.
Sincerely,
Yuri Rashkin
Defend Wisconsin News Round Up
UPDATE: Here's message from Facebook I received when attempting to repost this very blog on another Facebook page.
This Feature is Blocked For You
As we notified you earlier, this feature is temporarily unavailable because you've been making spammy and irrelevant posts on Facebook Pages.
UPDATE II. To my further dismay, I just discovered that this ban prohibits my ability to share links on other pages not only as Defend Wisconsin News Round Up but also as Yuri Rashkin. This needs to be stopped!
UPDATE III. The story evolves: "HEADS UP: A new tactic that is being used on some of us... There has been a surge of friend requests from Republicans and Evangelicals. Here is what they do - they "friend" you, then once your posts hit the activity stream, they flag them as spam or inappropriate which gets your account suspended for 15 days, meaning you can't post on peoples walls." posted on Defend Wisconsin News Round Up Facebook page.
UPDATE IV. Other pages affected by 15 day ban from Facebook reportedly include: via Evan Layton: Godless Liberal, Republican Bigotry Hate Fear Lies and Distortion, Amadalyn has had enough and Our Founding Fathers Vision.Welcome
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Anonymous’s rapid rise from the depths of geekdom to becoming a catalyst and nerve centre for real-life revolutionaries is one that has taken even some of its own members by surprise. The loosely-knit hive brings anonymous techies, hackers and, increasingly, activists together under a single appellation, united in their non-violent but often illegal collective action. With high-profile campaigns, centred on “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks that knock target websites offline, it has been transformed from a fringe group of law-breaking pranksters that emerged in 2006 into an international movement that draws new recruits by their thousands. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/42983-anonymous-and-the-arab-uprisingsAnonymous’s rapid rise from the depths of geekdom to becoming a catalyst and... more
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worrg
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The powerful biotechnology giant, which dominates Brazil's soya industry, has got a brochure on organic produce removed from the Ministry of Agriculture's website
http://www.lab.org.uk/index.php/news/65-news/989-brazil-monsanto-lays-down-the-law
Monsanto, the US-based biotechnology multinational, has had a brochure removed from website of the Ministry of Agriculture. The brochure, which can be accessed here, is a delightful and entirely innocuous publication, aimed at the general public. With illustrations by the renowned cartoonist and writer Ziraldo, it has been produced to publicise the new SISORG certification that has been produced by the Brazilian government for organic produce.
Although Monsanto has not explained the motives for its action, one can assume that it objects to the one and only mention of GMOs in the 32 pages of the brochure. The brochure states: "O agricultor organico nao cultiva transgenicos porque nao quer colocar em risco a diversidade de variedades que existem na natureza" (The organic farmer does not cultivate GMOs because he/she does not want to put at risk the diversity of the varieties that exist in nature).
It is difficult to think of other countries where such a statement, which is only reflecting what many organic farmers and anti-GMO activists believe, would be sufficient to have a publication taken off a government website. Monsanto has gone to court to have the publication banned, but the action by the Ministry of Agriculture has been taken before the court has made a ruling.
That Monsanto has the political clout to achieve this is a reflection of the expanding influence exercised by Monsanto since environmentalists and consumers lost a long legal battle and GMO soya was finally authorised in Brazil in 2003. Brazil is now one of the leading world producers of GMOThe powerful biotechnology giant, which dominates Brazil's soya industry, has got... more
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Don't let the right wing news fool you, they didn't stop him until he bashed the gop.
The whole thing is pretty funny, but JUMP to the last 2 minutes when they cut his mic
and asks him to go.
"Ha!!! Too Funny!!!"Don't let the right wing news fool you, they didn't stop him until he bashed... more
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KB723
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The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.
The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.
The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.
Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.
The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.
In one of the most ambitious efforts, United States officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will.
The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.
The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy. For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries through Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in places like China, and training for citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.
But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication. It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.
Sometimes the State Department is simply taking advantage of enterprising dissidents who have found ways to get around government censorship. American diplomats are meeting with operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls, according to interviews and the diplomatic cables.
The new initiatives have found a champion in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose department is spearheading the American effort. “We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail response to a query on the topic. “There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change, change America supports,” she said. “So we’re focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world.”The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow”... more
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