Tag Archives: Censorship
The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks
From Salon:
WikiLeaks has never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted for one or convicted of one. A consensus of legal experts agree that prosecuting the organization or Julian Assange for any of its leaks would be difficult in the extreme. Despite those facts, look at just some of the punishment that has been doled out to them and what has been threatened:
[There is a better list on Salon, with links and pics.]
-Paypal freezes WikiLeaks Account
-Australia cancels Assange’s passport
-Swiss bank freezes WikiLeaks founder’s legal defense fund
-Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks
-Seattle-based software company, Tableau removed charts links to by Wikileaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s statement.
– former Canada adviser claims Julian Assange should be assassinated
– WikiLeaks should be designated a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ Rep. Peter King fumes
Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them — all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority. They’ve blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange’s legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them “Terrorists” even though — unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things — neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.
This is all grounded in the toxic mindset expressed yesterday on Meet the Press (without challenge, naturally) by GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said of Assange: “I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done an enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” As usual, when wielded by American authorities, the term “terrorist” means nothing more than: “those who impede or defy the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy.” Anyone who does that is, by definition, a Terrorist. And note McConnell’s typical, highly representative view that if someone he wants to punish isn’t a criminal under the law, then you just “change the law” to make him one.
But that sort of legal scheming isn’t even necessary. The U.S. and its “friends” in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in “law.” That’s what the lawless, Wild Western World is: political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of “law.”
. . . .
People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?
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Yahoo News!’ Michael Calderone has a very good article documenting how major American media outlets — as always — snapped into line with the authorities they serve by ceasing to use the term “whistle-blower” to describe WikiLeaks. (Read more from salon.com)
Wikileaks Fallout Continues
Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators
Talking Points Memo — in an article headlined: “How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks” — detailed that Lieberman’s “staffers . . . called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, ‘Are there plans to take the site down?'” Shortly thereafter, “Amazon called them back . . . to say they had kicked Wikileaks off.” Lieberman’s spokeswoman said: “Sen. Lieberman hopes that the Amazon case will send the message to other companies that might host Wikileaks that it would be irresponsible to host the site.” (Read more from salon.com)
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Wikileaks skepticism:
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Lots of categorized information on wikipedia.
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hundreds of mirrors of WikiLeaks
“Even if you take down the server in Sweden, it’s too late,” Swiss Pirate Party Vice President Pascal Gloor told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“There are hundreds of mirrors of WikiLeaks now,” he said. “It’s a test for Internet censorship. Can governments take something off the net? I think not. There are copies of the website everywhere.”
In a high-tech media building in Bienne, Switzerland, the party convened an impromptu news conference late Friday to say it had no special knowledge of Assange’s whereabouts or ability to contact him, but had spoken with him weeks ago to help seek asylum in Switzerland. That was during Assange’s visit to Geneva last month when he spoke to reporters at the United Nations. (Read more from commondreams.org)
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Wikileaks cables reveal that the US wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law
Spain’s Congress is about to vote on a new and extremely harsh copyright/Internet law. It’s an open secret that the law was essentially drafted by American industry groups working with the US trade representative.
But it gets gets more interesting: 115 of the Wikileaks cables intercepted from the US embassy in Madrid were tagged with “KIPR” — that is, relating to “intellectual property,” The big question has been: will El Pais, the Spanish newspaper that has the complete trove of Wikileaks cables, release them in time to affect the vote on the new law?
Well, now they’ve started. The first 35 of the 115 cables have been released, and they confirm the widespread suspicion: the Spanish government and the opposition party were led around by the nose by the US representatives who are the real legislative authority in Spain. (Read more from boingboing.net)
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US Spying on UN Personnel
Assange told El Pais, “The whole chain of command who was aware of this order, and approved it, must resign if the US is to be seen to be a credible nation that obeys the rule of law. The order is so serious it may well have been put to the president for approval.”
Assange has also called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to resign her post.
The State Department directive sent in July 2009 asked diplomats to collect basic contact information about U.N. officials, including Internet passwords, credit card numbers and frequent flyer numbers.
WikiLeaks documents reveal that the CIA was behind the State Department’s directive to gather information on U.N. officials. (Read more from cbsnews.com)
U.S.S.A. Internet Warning
US Government Censors 70 Websites
The US is really ramping up its war on intellectual property infringement, a war which I’m sure will be just as successful, cheap and supported by the people as the wars on drugs and terrorism. The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN – not because owners of these sites were convicted of anything, but merely because complaints have been filed against them. Anyone want to take a guess how long it will be before the US government blocks WikiLeaks? Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.
The current seizures of domains did not even use the proposed bill which recently passed the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The seizures come from the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and cover about 70 websites relating to potential copyright infringement and counterfeit goods, among which is Torrent-Finder.com, a mere torrent search engine which does not host or even link to torrents; it displays content hosted elsewhere through embedded iframes.
“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the owner of Torrent-Finder explained TorrentFreak, “I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.”
This is equivalent to having your house seized for pointing out to someone you can buy weed in the college district. (Read more from osnews.com)
Wikileaks brings out government psycopaths, boot-licking media
– Rep. Peter King: WikiLeaks Should Be A ‘Terror Organisation’
– Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and ex-Pentagon official KT McFarland were among those claiming the guilty party should face execution for putting national security at risk by leaking the inflammatory information.
KT McFarland, who held national security posts under the Nixon, Ford and Reagan governments, backed the calls, saying Private Bradley Manning – the chief suspect of leaking the files – should face treason charges and possible execution. (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)
– Glen Greenwald: “there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don’t quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.” (Read more from salon.com)
– Jack Hunter (via facebook): “umm… What was worse for national security? Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby blowing Valerie Plame’s CIA cover to get back at her husband? Or ANYTHING we’ve seen from Wikileaks? Just saying…”
“thinks its weird how certain conservatives become obsessed with “exposing” Obama’s supposedly secret socialist or Muslim background, but freak out when Wikileaks exposes actual government shadiness. I guess conspiracy theories are only fun so long as they remain theories.”
– “That’s why the Establishment of both parties, and pundits on the neocon right and the Obama-ite left, are out to knife Assange and bring down WikiLeaks. They may fight about how much to raise the retirement age, and how to divide the tax loot, but when it comes to defending the Empire – and the cult of secrecy that su…stains it in a ‘democratic’ Imperium such as ours – they stand united, both red and blue.” (Read more from antiwar.com)
– Why I Love WikiLeaks – For restoring distrust in our most important institutions.
Headlines about our only Allie in the Middle East
U.N. Report finds Israel “summarily executed” U.S. citizen on flotilla
Last week, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a comprehensive report detailing its findings regarding the May, 2010, Israeli attack on the six-ship flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Israel-blockaded Gaza. The report has been largely ignored in the American media despite the fact (or, more accurately: because) it found that much of the Israeli force used “was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers”; that “at least six of the killings can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions” (Read more from salon.com)
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Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor. (Read more from heraldscotland.com)
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A tale of two ghettoes
Why is Shoppers Drug Mart pulling 3,500 copies of Adbusters, my magazine, off its shelves?
A week ago, in the National Post, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) accused Adbusters of anti-Semitism for publishing side-by-side photographs of the Gaza and Warsaw ghettos ( “Anti-Semitism on your magazine rack — courtesy of Adbusters,” Oct. 23). The CJC has since successfully lobbied senior management at Shoppers Drug Mart into pulling our magazine off the Canadian newsstands. (Read more from nationalpost.com)
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Israeli Artists Boycott New Theater in Settlement
An artists’ boycott of a $11 million performing arts center opening Monday in the Jewish settlement of Ariel is giving a new twist to a pressing question — where should Israel’s permanent borders run?
Leading Israeli playwrights, actors and artists say they will not cross the “Green Line” — Israel’s frontier before it captured the West Bank in 1967 — to perform in the new theater in Ariel, an Israeli enclave of 19,000 people.
The artists wrote in a letter explaining the boycott that Ariel was built in the heart of a war-won land to prevent creation of a Palestinian state. (Read more from artdaily.com)
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Tutu begs singers to call off Israel tour
Desmond Tutu has urged the Cape Town Opera to call off its tour of Israel “until both Israeli and Palestinian opera lovers have equal opportunity and unfettered access to performances”. (Read more from timeslive.co.za)
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US government offers Israel $3 billion weapons deal in exchange for 3-month settlement freeze
After US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Israeli Prime Minister on Friday, the US set out an offer of additional military assistance to Israel in exchange for a 90-day moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank. Construction already in progress on hundreds of units of housing would be allowed to continue during the ‘moratorium’, which also does not include East Jerusalem.
Some Palestinian analysts say the US offer is weak, as it does not pressure Israel in any way to adhere to past signed agreements or international law, but merely forestalls the inevitable failure of ‘peace talks’ between two vastly unequal players. Some have even suggested that this is an attempt by the US to bribe Israel to do what it is required to do under international law.
Since the ‘moratorium’ would not include East Jerusalem, where the majority of current construction of Israeli-only homes and displacement of indigenous Palestinian residents is taking place, some Palestinians feel that it is only a token gesture that does not in any way address their concerns.
In exchange for the temporary, partial moratorium on construction, the Israeli military would receive a gift of 20 F35 fighter jets, worth $3 billion, from the US. (Read more from alethonews.wordpress.com)
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Israel plans 1,300 homes in Arab East Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel is pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem, the Interior Ministry said on Monday, despite fierce opposition from Palestinians.
The timing of the announcement could prove an embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the United States looking for ways to revive Middle East peace talks that have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlement building. (Read more from af.reuters.com)
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How the state helped right-wing groups settle East Jerusalem
The state has transferred hundreds of assets to both groups without the requisite tender process. Each year, the state also allocates millions of shekels for security at these sites, including security cameras and fences that separate the settlers from the neighborhoods’ Palestinian residents.
Information revealed here for the first time provides a glimpse of the relationship between the state and these Jewish organizations. The information was made available to leftist activist Dror Etkes by court order following a three-year legal battle.
Elad, arguing that disclosure would lead to bloodshed, fought to prevent publication of the information. The state supported this claim by furnishing cautionary opinions by security experts. But in the end, Etkes obtained a list of 11 assets relayed by the state to Elad and Ateret Cohanim, mainly from 2003-2008, without full transparency and at eyebrow-raising prices. (Read more from haaretz.com)
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Galilee politician works to prevent sale of homes to Palestinians
Residents of Karmiel are invited to report Arabs who intend to buy flats in the town, said Karmiel’s deputy Mayor, Oren Milstein, in an interview on the Internet site “Besheva”. In the same interview he mentioned a weekly ad in the local press which calls on residents to report such information to a special “purple email address”. Milstein went on to say, using the first person: “Residents are welcome to turn to us the moment they become aware of a flat which is about to be sold to someone from one of the [surrounding Arab] villages. Once a flat in Karmiel is sold to an Arab family – it is a solid fact for generations to come”.
Milstein intimates that the selling of 30 flats has already been prevented in this way. (Read more from mondoweiss.net)
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US activist’s family sue Israel
A civil lawsuit brought by the parents of a US peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli forces bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003 has begun being heard in the Israeli city of Haifa.
The driver of the bulldozer that crushed Rachel Corrie to death will testify in court on Thursday, while the military commander in charge of the unit on the day will give evidence at a future date. (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)
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Bulldozer driver [contradicts affidavit]
The lawyer also pointed to discrepancies in the driver’s testimony regarding how far he continued driving after crushing Corrie. The driver told the court he drove another 20 meters (66 feet) before stopping, but in his affidavit he said he stopped after three meters (10 feet). In addition, the driver claimed Corrie’s body was found between the bulldozer and a mound of dirt, while another soldier said the body was behind the mound. During the hearing, Attorney Hussein displayed a photo in which no mound of dirt can be seen at all. (Read more from ynetnews.com)
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IDF prosecutors chided for using testimony of mentally disabled Palestinian witness
(Read more from haaretz.com)
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Jewish Extremists Try to Kill Chilean Tourist, Mistaken for Palestinian
Jerusalem – PNN – Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth published a report on Monday about the attempted murder of a Chilean tourist in Jerusalem by eight Jewish extremists who mistook him for an Arab.
Jose Dominus Nolido, 43, came to Israel to celebrate the wedding of his son’s Jewish friend and visit holy sites. As he returned to his hotel, Nolido said he was accosted by youths.
“I decided to return to my room and I went through Independence Park,” Nolido explained. “Suddenly a youth attacked me. I thought he was a soldier, since he had on Israeli army pants. I tried to flee, but I ran into seven others. I fell on the ground and couldn’t get away from the blows. Then I lost consciousness. I was convinced they wanted to kill me because I looked like an Arab.”
Nolido was taken to a Jerusalem hospital, bleeding from the head and eyes. Doctors said they feared loss of vision in his right eye. (Read more from pnn.ps — or in Spanish)
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US snubs Israel over threat to Iran
US rejects Israeli request for military threat against Iran over its nuclear programme, favouring continued sanctions. (Read more from aljazeera.net)
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Video: Settlers commit arson on Palestinian vehicles in Qusra: Oct 14th, 2010
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Israeli settlers burn yet another mosque in occupied Palestine
Israel is worried that Jewish militants torched a West Bank mosque overnight Monday in a bid to undermine peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
A mosque in the Palestinian village of Beit Fajar, just south of Bethlehem, became the fourth in the last two years to be the target of an arson attempt, according to human rights workers. The attack is believed to be part of a campaign by vigilante settlers to ignite violence by attacking Muslim holy sites. (Read more from csmonitor.com)
Pentagon braces for new Iraq war Wikileaks publication
The US military has assembled a 120-member team to prepare for the expected publication of some 400,000 Iraq war documents on the Wikileaks website.
The documents are thought to concern battle activity, Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties.
The Pentagon said it wants the documents back to avoid potentially damaging information being released.
The timing is unclear but it would dwarf Wikileaks’ July publication of more than 70,000 Afghan war files. (Read more from bbc.co.uk)
Pentagon attempting to buy (and burn) all copies of memoir to keep secrets
Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.
The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security. . . .
By the time the D.I.A. objected, however, several dozen copies of the unexpurgated 299-page book had already been sent out to potential reviewers, and some copies found their way to online booksellers. The New York Times was able to buy a copy online late last week.
The dispute arises as the Obama administration is cracking down on disclosures of classified information to the news media, pursuing three such prosecutions to date, the first since 1985. Separately, the military has charged an Army private with giving tens of thousands of classified documents to the organization WikiLeaks. . . .
Colonel Shaffer, his lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, and lawyers for the publisher are near an agreement with the Pentagon over what will be taken out of a new edition to be published Sept. 24, with the allegedly classified passages blacked out. But the two sides are still discussing whether the Pentagon will buy the first printing, currently in the publisher’s Virginia warehouse, and at what price. . . .
The agency studied the possibility of buying the first printing, Mr. Wise said, but the publisher of Random House, Bennett Cerf, told the agency he would be glad to sell all the copies to the agency — and then print more.
“Their clumsy efforts to suppress the book only made it a bestseller,” Mr. Wise said. (Read more from nytimes.com)
This incompetence is funny, until you realize they’re buying these books with our money.
Wikileaks
A couple months ago this viral video showing some very trigger happy helicopter pilots in Iraq caused quite a stir. It was released through Wikileaks.
The army has since detained the soldier who leaked the video.
Wikileaks has made more headlines recently:
Wikileaks founder in hiding, fearful of arrest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has gone into hiding, fearful of arrest by U.S. authorities, an Icelandic parliamentarian confirmed Friday. . . .
Authorities are interested in locating Assange following reports that an Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, recently transferred a huge volume of classified files to Wikileaks. Manning is now in military custody. . . .
Jonsdottir also added to widespread speculation in recent days that Wikileaks was about to release a new video, this once showing an alleged “massacre” of Afghan civilians in a U.S. airstrike.
She called it “worse than the Iraqi one,” referencing the video Wikileaks previously released showing a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi citizens that caused an international uproar. . . .
(Read more from blog.washingtonpost.com)
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The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.” . . .
This is a very comprehensive article about Wikileaks’ recent controversies. The Government attitude toward Wikileaks caught my eye:
In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which — as the NYT put it — placed WikiLeaks on “the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States.” That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks’ reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe.
In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide “manhunt” for its Editor-in-Chief.
(Read more from salon.com)
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Iceland Passes WikiLeaks Law
The Icelandic parliament has approved a package of broad protections for journalists, making the island nation perhaps the safest place in the world to afflict the comfortable and speak truth to power.
Icelandic leaders wanted to create a haven for journalists and whistle-blowers and sought assistance from WikiLeaks, the website that recently released video of U.S. forces gunning down civilians and journalists in Iraq.
(Read more from truthdig.com)
Oh Noz! The FTC doesn’t like sites like Lost Republic
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking ways to “reinvent” journalism, and that’s a cause for concern. According to a May 24 draft proposal, the agency thinks government should be at the center of a media overhaul. The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs. FTC’s policy staff fears this new reality.
“There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial journalism,” the report states. With no faith that the market will work things out for the better, government thinks it must come to the rescue. (Read more from washingtontimes.com)
US military detains soldier linked to Iraq video
The Army has detained a 22-year-old soldier in Baghdad in connection with the leak of a military video that shows Apache helicopters gunning down unarmed men in Iraq, including two journalists, defense officials said Monday.
Army Spc. Bradley Manning of Potomac, Md., now being held in Kuwait pending the results of an investigation, was the third suspected leaker known to have been apprehended under the Obama administration. (Read more from myantiwar.org)
Obama Czar Wants Mandatory Government Propaganda On Political Websites
I thought this article was sensationalism until I listened to the interview. Where the hell do you find people like this? And how the hell to they rise to such positions of power? The crooks are in charge.
I suspect this guy’s mandate is not to pass the propaganda legislation, but just to introduce the idea to the public as a possibility, to begin a discussion.
Cass Sunstein, who wrote a white paper calling for “conspiracy theories” to be banned, wants to legally force Americans to “do what’s best for our society” and dilute their own free speech.
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In a set of proposals designed to counter “dangerous” ideas, Sunstein suggested that the government could, “ban conspiracy theorizing,” or “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories”.
So-called “conspiracy theories that Sunstein said could be subject to government censorship included beliefs held by the vast majority of Americans, such as the notion that the JFK assassination occurred as part of a wider plot.
In his white paper, Sunstein also cited the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government censorship.
“If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction, that would be great, but if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe we should ask Congress to hold hearings.”
“The word voluntary is a little complicated. Sometimes people don’t do what’s best for society.”
Journal editor given ultimatum over peer review
THE editor of a journal which publishes controversial medical ideas claims he has been told that he will be fired unless he agrees to make the journal peer-reviewed.
“Medical Hypotheses is the last of the non-peer-reviewed journals in the mainstream scientific literature,” says Bruce Charlton, the editor facing the ultimatum. “They are going to sack me on 11 May unless I unconditionally accept the changes to the journal.”
Elsevier, which also publishes New Scientist, is demanding the changes after it withdrew two controversial papers that Medical Hypotheses published last year, one of them questioning whether HIV causes AIDS. Following an internal review, Elsevier ordered Charlton to introduce peer review and to devote extra attention to potentially controversial articles.
Charlton says that peer review would undermine the spirit of the journal, which is to challenge prevailing dogma. At present, Charlton alone decides what to publish.
Rob Heller, a spokesman for Elsevier, says the company has acted ethically towards Charlton but, “as owner of the journal, we have every right and obligation to make the final decision on the editorial policies of the journal”. (Read more from newscientist.com)
Do you talk about politics with fellow citizens? You may be a “grassroots lobbyist.” The governments wants to know.
IJ fighting a mandate to register with the government before becoming a “grassroots lobbyist.”
At least 36 states have laws requiring people who engage in this kind of activity to register with the government. In Washington, which has one of the most extensive regulations affecting citizen political participation in the nation, if you spend above an artificially low government-imposed cap to urge your fellow citizens to contact government officials, you are forced to register with the government and report your name, address, business, and occupation, the names and addresses of anyone with whom you are working to spread your message, and the names and addresses of each person who contributes as little as $25 to your efforts.
In other words, in Washington, if you speak too much about politics, the government wants to know about it. Moreover, the government does not merely collect this information—it makes it available to anyone with access to the Internet. Your name, address, business and occupation are provided to the world because you dared to exercise your fundamental First Amendment rights.
The Institute for Justice to file suit against the members ofWashingtons Public Disclosure Commission. Many Cultures, One Message et al. v. Clements seeks to vindicate the fundamental right of all Americans to engage in political activity without governmental interference.